Child of Mine

* Warning: This one's darker than my other stories.

All persons having sex in this fictional story are over eighteen years of age.

My poor eight year old son, Tommy, was laying on the hospital bed in pain. He'd broken his arm playing pick-up football with the neighborhood kids. The doctor said that he was going to need surgery and he was being prepared by the nurses when I got there from work.

He was scared, so I tried to lighten his mood by holding up his wrist and telling him his new bracelet looked nice. It was nothing, a joke, but as I looked at his wristband I saw the blood type A+. That ended any humor I may have had for the foreseeable future.

As they wheeled Tommy back to the operating room tears were filling my eyes. Shock, I suppose, more than anything caused the sudden emotions I was feeling. Why? How? I didn't want to know that Tommy wasn't mine. Dammit, he IS mine!

I looked over at my wife, Mandy, and she knew right away. We'd been married for ten years so non-verbal communication between us was easy to read. I was feeling sad, angry, betrayed and a million other things but what I saw in her eyes was fear. She knew that I knew.

Mandy ran out of the room crying. My mother-in-law, Carol, went behind her trying to comfort her, I'm sure Carol was thinking that Mandy was upset over Tommy's injury but that wasn't the reason at all. B+ and O- blood types don't make an A+ blood type child. 2+2 doesn't equal 5.

I remained in the room Tommy had been in, my head in my hands, crying for my loss. My wife, who I loved, had betrayed me. My son was not biologically my son. My marriage was over. I would no longer get to live with my kids. All of that was now over. I felt like I was being sent off to prison.

*************************

I waited an hour and a half in that room, alone, until Tommy got out of surgery. Mandy never came back in. The nurse came in and told me I could see Tommy in the recovery room so I wiped my eyes, sorted myself and went to see my boy.

Mandy was standing beside Tommy's gurney with tears pouring down her face telling him what a brave boy he was as I came in. She saw me and immediately went to her mother's arms sobbing.

Tommy didn't need to see all of this right now. I got between Mandy and Tommy beside the gurney and asked him how he was doing. He was still a little out of it and mumbled something. I patted his head and kissed his cheek and then turned to my unfaithful bride.

"Pull yourself together for your son. He's scared and needs his mother to reassure him that he's going to be okay. I'm going home to take care of Cindy and Bobby." I told her, gritting my teeth the whole time, trying not to beat the shit out of the cheating bitch.

I got home in time to eat the hot dogs and macaroni and cheese that our sixteen year old babysitter, Jan, had made the kids for dinner. Jan lived a few houses over and babysat whenever we asked her. She asked about Tommy and I told her the surgery went well. She was a sweet girl.

After Jan left I got the kid's baths and readied them for bed. It took two stories to finally get them to sleep. I went up and packed a suitcase with a week's worth of clothes. I was heading down the stairs with the suitcase when Mandy came in the door. She was already crying, but when she saw me with the suitcase she broke down and collapsed on the floor.

"Please, don't leave me, Ricky, please." she squeaked out.

"I can't stay here right now. I need to get away for awhile. I'm afraid of what I might say to you." I told her teeth gritted again.

"I can explain, Honey..." I cut her off.

"Don't 'Honey' me, Amanda! You don't get to call me that after what you've done! You're nothing but a fucking liar and I don't want to be around you!" I said marching out the door and slamming it behind me.

I needed to leave because my anger was boiling over and I just wanted to destroy something. I went to the gym and pummeled the speed bag and body bag for a good hour. Some of the acquaintances that I'd made there from working out together looked nervously toward me.

I felt slightly better after my 'workout'. I drove down the street to a hotel and checked in. I texted Mandy my location in case something happened with one of the kids and turned my phone off.

I needed a plan. Divorce was obvious. Mandy had not only cheated on me but she let me raise my cuckold's son for eight years. There's no coming back from that betrayal. I turned my phone back on to call my brother, Tom, and saw four missed calls, two voicemails and about six texts from Mandy. I ignored them.

I called Tom and told him what I'd discovered. He couldn't believe that Mandy would do that. He reminded me that we grew up with Mandy and what I was telling him was WAY out of character for her. I explained to him that the irrefutable evidence was Tommy's blood type. There was no denying the fact that she'd had sex with another man and gotten pregnant.

Tom reluctantly gave me the name of a divorce lawyer his sister-in-law had used and advised that I needed to talk with Mandy before ringing off. Being past midnight I tried to sleep.

*******************

I awoke to my phone ringing and instinctively answered it without seeing who it was. It was, Beth, Mandy's older sister. "Ricky, I need to speak with you, in person. Could we meet at Starbucks this morning to talk?" she asked bruskly.

"How's 10:00 sound Beth? Just you, not your sister, understand?"

"You really need to talk to her Rick. She's crushed. She loves you." Beth told me pleadingly.

"I'll see you at 10:00." I replied rather dryly.

********************

Beth was already sitting at a booth when I arrived five minutes before ten. She looked nervous and already had unshed tears in her eyes.

"Good morning, Beth."

"Hi Ricky." Beth replied sadly.

"It's your show Beth. What are you going to tell me that would ever change the way I feel about what your cheating slut of a sister did?"

I could see her boiling up. "Don't call her that, Ricky! You need to talk with her. It's not what you think!"

"What the hell could it possibly be, Beth!? She fucked some guy, got pregnant, passed the baby off as my child and let me raise poor Tommy for eight years thinking I was his father!" I spit out at her.

"You are his father, Rick even if he doesn't share your DNA. Don't you say otherwise and don't destroy that boy by abandoning him just because you're angry with his mother!" Beth was now crying angrily and showing her frustration.

"I'm not giving up and running out on my son, Beth. I just needed some time away from Mandy. I'm afraid of what I'll say and do the next time I see that...her."

"You have to talk with her, Rick. Please. She loves you so much. Please just talk to her."

"I really don't have anything to say to her, Beth. She did what she did knowing the consequences and this is the result. She had to know that I'd never accept her cheating on me. That's why she hid the fact that Tommy's not mine."

"You're wrong about her. She made me swear that I'd never tell you anything about what happened, she can tell you. Just talk to her." Beth was pleading with me now.

"I don't even want to be in the same room with that lying bitch, Beth! You have to know that! There's no excuse for cheating on your husband with some guy, getting pregnant, and then passing the kid off as your husband's. No fucking excuse! What's she going to tell me? Huh!? That she was drunk!? Fuck her!" The people sitting near us were starting to get uncomfortable.

Beth was sobbing now. "Please just talk to her instead of being so damn stubborn. I know you're hurting. Mandy's hurting too. Please, Ricky."

Beth was so desperate and emotional that in a moment of weakness I agreed to speak with Mandy. Beth jumped into my lap and hugged me so hard I couldn't get a breath.

She said into my, now wet with tears, shoulder; "Thank you, Rick. I couldn't let you just throw her away without trying my best to save her. I don't think she could've lived with herself if she thought she'd hurt you so badly that you wouldn't even talk to her."

*****************

I didn't sleep one minute the night before I was to meet Mandy. The pain and anguish of finding out that my son wasn't my son and Mandy had cheated on me was all consuming. I was about to discover the old saying 'Things could be worse' was in fact the truth.

Mandy looked horrible. I'm sure I wasn't much better, but I'd never seen her so torn up. There were bags under her red eyes where she'd been crying. Her hair looked like she'd slept on it. If I wasn't mistaken I think she was wearing the same clothes she'd had on the day before.

As mad as I was at her I didn't try to stop the hug she gave me. She cried into my chest for several minutes before I stepped back from her and guided her over to a table near the window.

"Mandy, what is it that you wanted to talk to me about?" I asked her more sternly than I intended.

It was taking all her strength to compose herself. "I love you so much, Ricky. I didn't want to hurt you or lose you because of something you might do. I hoped and prayed Tommy was yours all this time so you would never have to feel the pain of knowing." She dropped her head to the table and sobbed into her arms.

"How could you betray me like that Mandy? What did I ever do to make you hate me that much!?" My anger was coming out now so I tried to keep my comments short.

Mandy was wailing now "I never betrayed you, Ricky. Ever..."

"Oh really, Mandy!! How do you explain Tommy then! An act of god! If you just came here to lie then I'm going to leave. What's the point!?"

"He raped me, Ricky." It sounded so pitiful and small that I couldn't trust myself to have heard it correctly.

"What? Who?"

"Some guy that was at the bar Beth and I went to when you were off on your two week duty at Camp Pendleton." she squeaked out.

"You don't know his name? How convenient. How long did it take you to make that one up!?"

Mandy lifted herself up from the table and even through the tears I saw the anger. "I would never lie about something like that! What the hell, Rick!"

I was across the table in one step holding her as she wept. "Why, Mandy? Why didn't you ever tell me?" I was crying also now. Someone had hurt my Mandy. I'll search to the end of the earth to find him and make him pay for what he's done.

"Because you would have killed him and gone to jail, Ricky. If I can live with it you can too. DON'T let him win! Come back to me and let's live our lives like we've always planned. Please."

If you've never had someone you know be raped or sexually violated then there's no way to express the feeling of helplessness that you feel. Mandy was right not to tell me. Even now, eight years later I'm not sure I won't track him down and castrate him.

"What's his name Mandy?" My words came out cold and flat. At that point I knew that he would die. I could crush the life out of him and spit on him as I walked off and left his dead body where it lied. No way he lives.

"No, Ricky, no dammit! This is why I never told you. Tommy, Cindy, Bobby and I all need you. Killing him won't take it back, Honey. It's over."

"Did you go to the police? Did anything happen to him or is he out there doing this to other women?" My words had no emotion other than fact finding.

"I did a rape kit and all that, but they never found him."

"Who knows besides you and Beth?"

"Just Tom. He came around to check on me and saw the emotional state I was in and made me tell him what was going on."

My own brother knew and didn't tell me. I was going to have a few words with him later.

"Please come back home, Ricky. The kids miss you so much."

"I'll be home this evening, Honey. I'm so sorry that I wasn't there for you when you needed me." I started crying again.

Mandy kissed me and wiped a tear from my cheek. "I love you, Ricky. I can't wait to fall into your arms in bed tonight." We both got up and I kissed her as we went off to find our own vehicles.

I drove straight to Tom's. I knocked and then stepped in like I always did. Tom saw the look on my face and knew. "She told you, huh?"

I grabbed him in a bear hug, crying into his shoulder. "She got raped, Tom and I wasn't here for her."

"She understood that Rick. She was just worried about you finding out and spending your life in prison. She really loves you."

"Why didn't you tell me, Tommy? I had a right to know. She wasn't herself for so long after I go back from my duty. I thought she'd had an affair."

"I felt the same way that she did. I didn't want you to end up in prison."

"I want to find him, Tom. I want the guy! I'll be careful, he'll just disappear"

Tom pushed off of me and looked into my eyes. "I took care of it."

As I looked at him I knew that he had. My big brother had taken care of me, like he always did. "Thanks, Tommy. For Mandy."

"For Mandy" he echoed.

"How'd you find him?"

"I watched the video of the parking lot from the bar Beth and Mandy went to. The owner was more than happy to allow me to watch it after I told him what happened. I saw the prick force Mandy into the back of his car. I wrote down the license plate number and the make of car. Then I drove around every night looking for that car at all the bars around town.

I found the car and the fucker was raping some poor woman in the back of it when I got there. I yanked him out of the car with his pants down around his ankles and started beating the shit out of him.

The woman he was raping came out of the car and started kicking him in the nuts. He finally went unconscious so I started dragging him to my truck to take him out to the country and bury him in the woods. I looked up wondering why he was so light and the woman had his feet helping me lift him.

She told me that she was going with me. Her clothes were all torn, so I gave her my jacket and we climbed in the truck and took off.

Asshole was semi conscious when we got to the spot in the woods I'd picked out. The woman took care of that problem quickly by smashing his head with the shovel I'd brought. She was pretty ruthless.

She even helped me dig the hole and toss him in it. The drive back to her car we were both quiet but she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek once we got back to the parking lot, to thank me for saving her. After giving me her phone number she told me to please call her sometime."

"Does Mandy know that you took care of him?"

"No. Only me and the woman who helped me know and now you. Let's keep it that way, Rick."

"I won't tell anyone but maybe you should tell Mandy to ease her mind. So what's the woman's name that helped you? I want to send her some flowers for helping."

"You don't need to do that, Rick."

"I want to. What's her name?"

"Flowers would be nice!" Tom's wife Connie called out from the kitchen.

"Connie! She's the one who helped you?"

Connie came in the room before Tom could answer. "So now you know why Tom and I will never divorce or cheat on each other." She laughingly said. "We're both scared to death!"

"I'm sorry that happened to you Connie but thank you for helping me and Mandy."

"So what's going on with you and Mandy now?"

"I'm moving back home. She wants to go back to the way we were and so do I. Go back to the 'Happily ever after'."

"Sounds like what you should do. What about Tommy? It's not the kid's fault, right?"

"Tommy's my son, but he doesn't need to know the truth until he's much older."

"I agree. Get out of here and go to your wife and family. They miss you."

******************

I got home about dinner time and got attacked by two little monsters. Boy, did I miss them. Tommy was more subdued than the other two due to his cast but he gave me a big hug also.

"Mommy, daddy's home! Daddy mommy's been a cry baby. All the time." Bobby informed me. As I walked toward the kitchen a full grown woman came flying at me like a spider monkey and jumped into my arms knocking me to the floor.

"You're home!" Mandy yelled showering me with kisses. She was soon joined by three little kids as we all rolled around on the floor.

Mandy was right, of course. My family would not be here hugging and kissing on each other if she'd told me what happened back then. I would have killed him and been caught. If that would've happened Cindy and Bobby would never have been born.

Epilogue:

It didn't take long to realize that I needed counseling. The anger and helplessness I felt at someone doing that to my wife and me not being here to protect her was overwhelming me. It took several months but I'm beginning to feel better about myself. Mandy has helped tremendously with that. After coming close to losing me the little things I used to do that would annoy her are being completely ignored. She dotes on me now as I do her.

Making love to Mandy that first time was difficult for me. She finally just climbed on top of me, slid my cock in her and got forehead to forehead with me. "Listen Ricky, we've made love a thousand times since that bastard raped me and you never even knew it. It was eight years ago! We promised each other on our wedding night that when I need my itch scratched, you would do your duty and when you need your itch scratched, I would do my duty. I know mentally it's hard right now, but I almost lost you and I REALLY need you. I'm about to show my man how much I love him in every possible way, if you get my meaning, so take your wife, in ANY way you want or have ever wanted, right now!

I made love to her in every way a man could that night until I passed out from exhaustion. Mandy promised to do anything in the bedroom that I asked her to do from that night forward...I think she really liked doing some of the things she thought were 'dirty' before, to my great joy.

My love for Tommy never wavered. He is my son. All three of our kids grew up to make us proud and provided Mandy and I with six grandchildren.

Mandy still takes spells occasionally and I know she's thinking about the time she was violated. I would do anything to be able to take her pain away. I hold her and let her know that she's safe and loved during those times. I need to accept that's all I'll ever be able to do to help her.